


Learning Friendship

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Thursday
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-15
Updated: 2017-07-15
Packaged: 2018-12-02 11:19:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11508333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: Blair has learned to be content with his own company... and then he discovers friendship





	Learning Friendship

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Sentinel Thursday prompt 'companion'

Learning Friendship

by  Bluewolf

Blair Sandburg had always been content with his own company. His mother's nomadic lifestyle ensured that; as a young child it was a fact of his life that as a newcomer to an area he was inevitably regarded with a degree of distrust, especially since his vocabulary was full of words like 'karma' that were completely unknown to the other children. And by the time the other children were beginning to accept him, Naomi had decided that it was time to move on, and it all started again somewhere else. It might have been easier if Naomi had moved from city to city - his easiest transition had been to Fort Worth where they lived for a while with Naomi's sister, though Blair was never totally sure whether that was because it was a city or because he was with his cousins who had been born there; but she mostly seemed to prefer small rural towns. Towns that were very insular.

By the time he was eight he had learned not to use words like 'karma' at school, and he had learned enough about sports - and was good enough - that his presence was tolerated by his schoolmates, but he never had any friends. In any case, even at that age he understood that once Naomi left somewhere, she was unlikely ever to go back, and so any friendships he might form were doomed.

Even after he went to Rainier and was living a more settled life, he had no friends. Acquaintances, yes; but he was too young to be fully accepted by his fellow students. Luckily he loved learning; and substituted hours of study for the companionship of others, content that he wasn't being ostracized by his fellow students the way he had often been as a young child.

The nearest thing he had to a friend was Dr. Eli Stoddard, who saw his potential as an anthropologist - and, indeed, saw a lot of himself in the young student; for Stoddard, too, had gone to university when he was sixteen, and knew the problems faced by anyone who was at least two years younger than his fellow students. But Stoddard also knew that he had to be circumspect in his dealings with Blair, because Blair was so young, because Blair was his pupil. It would be very easy for someone to say 'molesting a child'. And so, although friendly, he maintained a certain distance, although he usually tried to include Blair when he organized short expeditions as part of the curriculum - participation was voluntary, if only because he knew many of the students couldn't afford the cost - although it was, in effect, course work, Rainier would not pay their expenses.

When Blair went on these expeditions, he found it easy to gain the acceptance of the tribes they visited - it was only later that he realized it was because the tribal shaman, every time, accepted him. And every shaman he met taught him something of what it was, to be a shaman.

But also, every time, he had to return to Cascade, leaving behind the companionship he had so briefly found.

And he was glad that he was content with his own company because, every time, he saw the basic loneliness of a shaman's life. Highly respected by his - or in some cases, her - community... but also feared by everyone, with nobody to call friend.

By the time he was a TA, Blair had begun to form friendships - by then the age difference didn't matter so much. And Blair now understood why Eli Stoddard, a man he had regarded as something of a father figure, had maintained a certain distance. One of his friends - well, more of a friendly acquaintance than a real friend - made the mistake of dating one of his freshman students... and when he had too much integrity to give her a grade she hadn't worked for, she accused him of 'inappropriate behaviour' towards her, of promising her good grades if she slept with him and then failing to make good on his promise. Indeed, her inference was that he had deliberately given her a grade lower than she deserved.

Barry had been genuinely fond of her; and with the realization that the girl he had believed would be his life's companion had merely been using him, he killed himself.

And Blair understood that no matter how hard the girl had worked, whatever grade she got through hard work, there would always have been those who said she got a good grade because she was sleeping with the lecturer. And so, although there were one or two of his students he was attracted to and wouldn't have been averse to dating, he limited his amorous approaches to  his fellow TAs.

And he was careful - very careful - on the rare occasions when he did sleep with one of them. He knew that his long-term plans did not include marriage, and he had no wish to inflict single parenthood on any girl he was fond enough of to sleep with.

His long-term plans did not include marriage... but in his more honest moments, he wasn't sure just what his long-term plans actually were. He did hope to get a PhD - eventually - if he could only find a subject for a dissertation. His Masters thesis had leaned on historical sentinels, with references to how much value sentinels were to their communities; but lacking any further information on them, he needed a different subject for his PhD, and his range of interests was so great, he couldn't think of any one subject he could use for a doctoral dissertation.

And then one of his students, who had a part-time job at the local hospital, faxed him information on a man who had gone in complaining about noises being too loud, lights being too bright...

Blair went to meet the man, hoping to find a sentinel, hoping to find a subject for his dissertation that would take a different direction from the historical one that formed his Masters thesis... and he did; but he soon discovered that he had also found more than that.

And then his mother sent his four-years-in-the-making dissertation to her publisher friend to be checked, as she thought, for cosmetic 'faults' and in the media furor that followed he realized the problems such a simple piece of thoughtlessness were causing his friend.

Even four years previously he would have shrugged dismissively and offered a relatively superficial apology; but in those four years he had learned the difference between acquaintanceship and friendship. He had learned what it was to have a friend, a companion... a soulmate. And without a second thought he threw away his academic career, understanding how much more his sentinel's friendship was worth to him than that career.

Only to be offered a job working as a detective. And with that came the realization that pretty well everyone in the PD understood what he had done... and why. They had thought they were keeping Jim's senses a secret - but Jim hadn't been all that careful to hide what he could see or hear; the only real secret was the name 'sentinel' - nobody but Simon - and eventually Megan - knew what to call the man with such good sight and hearing. But everyone in the PD knew that for Jim to remain effective he needed to keep the public at large in ignorance of how well his senses worked.

And so Blair went to the Academy, took the required courses and returned to the PD to join his friend - his companion - and they worked together to keep Cascade as crime-free as possible.


End file.
